Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Going to buy a mental institution-not for the reason you'd think.

No, not to admit myself. Although some days I'm close. No, I want to buy a mental institution and start a day care there. You see, it will be a specialty day care, with padded walls, for kids like mine who seem to feel the incessant need to wreck themselves.

I am home because day care called to tell me that Henry had hit his head. This in and of itself was not concerning-he hits his head all the time. But for them to call me, and to not just let me know when I picked him up, let me know it was kind of serious. She said he wasn't bleeding, but did have a big bruise and a goose egg. I know I seem like an overly-worrying mom here (mainly because that's what I am) but I just don't take chances with my kid, so I ran out of work to go get him and make sure he was ok. Like I said, this is not an alarmist day care, so if they were concerned enough to call me, I was concerned.

So I ran the whole way to my car, sped all the way to day care, and found him bruised up but pretty happy. We're home now, oatmeal cookies in the oven, kid taking a nap while I check on him incessantly and wait for a call from the pediatrician, just making sure that we don't need to take him in. While I wait, I should probably make at least one apology.

Lady in the Tercel ahead of me on I95-I am sorry for that long string of very profane words I let loose while pointing at you, lest you think they were directed at someone else. I'm sure you are a kind person with a good reputation, as is your mother, and I'm sorry for questioning your morals or choice of nighttime, pimp-related employment.

To be fair, you were going 15 under the speed limit on the INTERSTATE. Just take surface roads, in Richmond that's usually faster anyway.

To the guy in the van who I shrieked "Pick a fucking lane, asshole!" at, I stand by that. You only get one. Asshole. Same goes for the lady who was on her cell phone and almost made me miss a green light.

Ok, so there aren't so many apologies, but know that I was in an increased state of agitation, and I normally don't yell at other drivers. I've been trying to break Ben of the habit. Even he's not as bad as his sister, though. If Andrew Dice Clay had to ride in a car with her in Northern Virginia, he'd be telling her to tone it down.

So the kid is fine. In other news, I found a good friend on Facebook who I hadn't seen in, god, going on fifteen years or so, I guess, and got to chat with him a bit. I have mixed feelings about Facebook. I mean, I love that it keeps me in touch with my family, and allows me to obnoxiously hose people who have innocently friended me with pictures of my kid. But sometimes I get those friend requests from people who made no attempt to hide the fact that they despised me when we actually new each other. Maybe people grow, but Facebook has been a mix of excitement over seeing people I love who I've lost touch with, and that old feeling of dread that the unpopular kids feel when they walk into high school.

It doesn't help that whenever I run into someone from my past on there, I start having dreams about ALL the people I knew during that time. They're never nice, fun dreams, like ones of us camping and drinking and having a blast. The dreams are always full of people I don't care to see, like I'm sitting by the road wearing no pants and all my ex-boyfriends are driving by and laughing.

So it's a love-hate relationship. But this particular friend pointed out something to me. Lately I'd been too focused on the bad times, and the people I shouldn't have bothered with, and I'd really forgotten about all the good people and good times. And there were a lot of them. It's so great when you can connect with someone you haven't seen in years and it's like no time has passed at all. But he made me realize that I can be a really pessimistic glass half-empty person when it comes to stuff like that. Instead of rolling my eyes over the asshole I dated, I should think about the group of friends I made because I dated him. There really were some great people there, and the summer before college was one of the most fun times in my life because of them.

It's almost made me want to track a few down, but I think once you're a loser at some point in your life, it's hard to shake that tiny "What if they don't want to hear from me?" voice that's still trying to convince you that you're fat, that nobody likes you, and they're laughing at you because you have a tampon hanging out of your bookbag and they know your jeans came from Wal-Mart.

Some stuff you grow up with is just hard to shake. So I'll work on remembering the good times, and all the misfits who I fit in just fine with. And be glad for the ones I still have in my life (and yes, we're all still misfits and nerds, but when you get older, that sort of gets cooler.)

That just shows you how little you can know about somebody-I always saw you as really confident, Regina. If anything, I was a little envious of that. You didn't seem to care what anyone thought of you.

About Me

This started as a mom blog that I was doing to stave off boredom for the three months I was home on maternity leave, morphed into a page I bitched on once a month after I went back to work, and is now in its third incarnation:
Blog tracking single mom as she navigates divorce, single parenthood, potential dating, and other hilarious and simultaneously depressing topics. But in a funny way!